JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel has paid Russia $ 1.2 million to provide the Syrian government with coronavirus vaccines as part of a deal that secured the release of an Israeli woman detained in Damascus, according to Israeli media reports on Sunday.
The terms of the clandestine trade-off orchestrated by Moscow between the two nations remained unclear. But the fact that Israel is supplying vaccines to Syria – a hostile country harboring hostile Iranian forces – has been criticized at home and contrasts with Israel’s refusal to provide significant quantities of vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that “not a single Israeli vaccine” was involved in the deal. He did not address whether Israel paid for Russian vaccines, saying Russia insisted that the details of the exchange remain secret.
Netanyahu’s office declined comment, and many details of the agreement remained censored.
Labor party leader Merav Michaeli called on the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to discuss the deal and Netanyahu’s “political, inappropriate use of censorship.”
“Why do Israeli citizens have to consistently learn about things from foreign media that their prime minister is hiding from them?” she said on Israeli Kan radio on Sunday.
Israel announced Friday that it had reached a Russian-brokered deal to bring home a young woman who had entered neighboring Syria earlier this month. In return, Israel said it released two Syrian herders who entered Israeli territory.
Netanyahu boasted that his warm ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin helped close the deal. His office made no mention of an agreement to pay for vaccines for Syria.
Israel has paid for an undisclosed number of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, according to Israeli reports. The Russian direct investment fund, which funded the development of Sputnik V, said in November that it will cost less than $ 10 per dose internationally.
The Syrian state news agency denied the deal exists.
The released 25-year-old Israeli woman returned to Israel via Moscow and was interrogated by Israel’s internal security service. She is from the predominantly ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modiin Illit in the West Bank and previously tried to cross Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip and Jordan, Israeli media said.
The woman reportedly crossed Syrian territory from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 war in the Middle East and annexed it in 1981, a movement not widely recognized internationally. Her identity and motivation for the crossing to Syria were not disclosed by Israeli officials.
Gideon Saar, a former Netanyahu ally who wants to sack him in the upcoming Israeli elections, said on Sunday that the “government’s censorship on something Damascus and Moscow know, and Israeli citizens don’t, is incomprehensible.”
Israel and Syria are still in an official state of war and Israeli citizens are officially prohibited from visiting Syria.
Israel’s nemesis Iran has sent troops to support Syrian President Bashar Assad against rebel groups. Israel views the Iranian bulwark on its northern border as a red line and has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Iran-linked facilities and suspected weapon convoys destined for the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Israel has provided humanitarian aid to groups unrelated to Assad and provided medical treatment to thousands of Syrians who reached the Golan Heights.
Netanyahu’s reported agreement to pay for vaccines to an enemy country contrasts with his refusal to provide large quantities of vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which has sparked protests from human rights organizations.
The differences between Israel’s successful vaccination pressure with its own population and the Palestinians have been criticized by UN officials and rights groups and have shed light on the inequalities between rich and poor countries accessing vaccines.
These groups argue that Israel is responsible for vaccinating the Palestinians, while Israel has argued that it is not responsible for vaccinating them and that, under interim peace agreements reached in the 1990s, the internationally backed Palestinian Authority must do it. ensure that their own population is vaccinated. Israel’s vaccination campaign also included its own Arab population.
The Palestinian Authority has not publicly asked for Israeli help, but says it is purchasing vaccines itself through a World Health Organization for poorer countries. But earlier this month, Israel agreed to share 2,000 vaccines with the Palestinians to inoculate medical workers in the West Bank.
Ahmad Tibi, a lawmaker with the Joint List of Arab Parties in the Israeli Knesset, wrote on Twitter Friday, “Should we wait for a Jewish person to cross the Gaza border before they earn vaccines?”